One man's view of a small corner of the planet.
The opinions are my own and, while I welcome your comments, I will maintain decorum here.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Buckley R.I.P.

I remember seeing William F Buckley when I was a teen, probably with Cavett or Frost and thinking how charismatic he was and how wrong. He was a child of privilege trying to build a nation that rewarded privilege. It was only later that I saw that he had another side, one that matched my ideals a little more closely. He worked against extremism in the defense of his ideals, helping to purge the conservative movement of Birchers and anti-Semites.

I would never have been an admirer of WFB but I cannot deny the influence he had on America. May he rest in peace.

Let's not forget, however, that the right-wingers who today are lining up to lionize Buckley are the same ones who sought to marginalize him just a few short years ago. From Salon:

But Buckley, a mere eight weeks later, echoed Dean's comments almostverbatim while writing about the war in National Review: "One can't doubt thatthe American objective in Iraq has failed," Buckley declared. "Our mission hasfailed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading armyof 130,000 Americans." He urged the Bush administration to consider"acknowledgment of defeat." In an earlier November 2005 interview with the Wall Street Journal -- on almost the same exact day Dean made his comments -- Buckley went even further, declaring that the invasion of Iraq was "anything butconservative."

Buckley was a leader in denouncing the party which GWB had made of the GOP and he was rewarded with scorn. Greenwald continues.

New Republic writer Johann Hari went undercover on a National Review cruisein 2006 and detailed a bitter argument that broke out between Buckley andneoconservative icon Norman Podhoretz. After listening to the two right-wingelders bicker on virtually every foreign policy issue, Hari concluded:"Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism."

Nonetheless, there is no question that the bulk of adherentsto the conservative movement that Buckley founded now side with Podhoretz, notwith Buckley. As Hari reported, the crowd cheered loudly for Podhoretz, and notfor Buckley. One of the National Review cruise member seated at Hari's tablescoffed that Buckley's refusal to fight Muslim terrorists made him a "coward,"while his wife dismissed Buckley as nothing more than an "old man," and then"tapped her head with her finger to suggest dementia."

What Buckley gave to the Conservative movement was a veneer of style, a class that it may never regain. Even in his most virulent feuds Buckley was able to hold the eye and ear of those who disagreed. While Buckley could be a frequent, popular guest on Johnny Carson's show, those who would fill his well-made shoes today manage to attract only scorn after brief appearances outside their carefully constructed echo chambers.

...and even the magazine he founded, came to bear so little resemblance eitherto Buckley's style or substance. The erudite and civil debates that Buckleyfamously engaged in with the likes of Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky are about asfar removed as possible from the shallow, anti-intellectual screeching found intoday's National Review from the likes of Kathryn Jean Lopez, Jonah Goldberg and editor Rich Lowry. And as Buckley's heresies became more numerous andpronounced, right-wing pundits such as popular blogger Ed Morrissey beganactually dismissing Buckley's conservatism as an obsolete relic of the pre-9/11past, claiming that the profound lessons of 9/11 are what account for "thedifference between traditional conservatives and the Bush Administration'sefforts in foreign policy, along with a host of other arenas."

Buckley's mind was an epee in a world that was coming to be dominated by those wielding clubs. He will be missed. There can be no doubt of that. But after today or this week, after the funeral cortege has passed and the trumpets have stopped sounding, Buckley will be shunted aside again and his memory will slowly lose its sheen. Coulter and Limbaugh and Goldberg and yes, even Milwaukee's own pipsqueaks, will forget what Buckley stood for and ignore his methods and tools in a mad scramble to find the muddy bottom of political discourse.

But in both style and substance, the Limbaugh-Coulter-Kristol-NationalReview-led conservative movement of today bears little resemblance to whatBuckley spent most of his adult life developing and creating. Modernconservative polemicists continue to use Buckley as a symbolic prop behind whichthey march -- and that exploitation will intensify by many magnitudes now thathe has passed away -- yet, as Buckley himself increasingly recognized, today'sconservatives repudiate and violate much of what Buckley stood for andbelieved.